We invented why

[gemfyre]

Goddamn I need the book of this Evolution series. So I can read and ponder and read again. This is really making me think. I have a feeling it may change my entire attitude about some things.

Tonight I learned about memes. Memes are are specifically human. Whereas the rest of the living world is shaped by genes and their evolution. Humans have changed. You've probably heard me say before that I believe humans have stunted thier own evolution. Well this episode gave me a bit of food for thought. Humans no longer use genes to evolve, we use memes, we mimic others and learn, we use complex language. The fastet transferred and "best" memes are the ones passed on. A scary thought was also mentioned about the fact that the most uneducated people will have the most offspring (because the educated know about and use birth control.) But that probably doesn't matter seeing as humans don't evolve that way anymore anyway.

But one of the most mindbending parts of this concept is that genes are tangible. It's a nucleic acid, a sequence of protiens, with a good enough microscope I can see it and I can see evidence of it in many simpler experiments. But a meme, that has no tangible form, but a like a gene it seems to be controlling us now. Maybe we are no longer slaves to the nucleic acid, but slaves to some other bizarre force that has no physical substance.

In which case, maybe there truly ARE gods that are not just our creation. No, that doesn't make sense. We created it in the first place, but now it DOES control us, and our evolution. We haven't stunted our evolution, we've CHANGED it's mechanism. God that's mindblowing.

Comments

[leemur.livejournal.com]

Remind em to lend you a book I just finished reading called The Collapse of Chaos. Really heavy going, but well worth it.

Re:

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

I really must have that book on Lamarckism/retrogenes too.

It's about $23 from Dymocks, and I just found the Evolution book is only $40 now, used to be $80 or more when I first saw it.

[morninglord.livejournal.com]

This is what I meant when I said "memonic virus" when I was shitstirring before.
I read an article about memes a long long time ago and read up about it. I like the fact that our conciousness is just a bunch of memes all collecting together that creates something that is more than the sum of the parts. "I" IS an illusion. Its the seperate parts of your mind all producing an output that "appears" to think for itself. In reality, its not true. Its just the gui for your mind. (Ok, gui is a BAD example, and in fact makes no sense. Maybe "final tier of the os" cos theres lots of stuff underneath it all that all makes it run is a better one, but dammit gui just sounds better. At heart, I am a player with words. ^__^)
I like memes. They explain so much about us.
Im surprised you hadn't read about it before, actually. That's really weird. I thought it was common knowledge. :)

Re:

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

I think I had heard about them once or twice, but not like this show explained it all.

I now KNOW precisely what they are and what they do.

[morninglord.livejournal.com]

music is a wonderful example of a type of meme. the good ones get in your head and you cant get rid of them. :)

[arkem.livejournal.com]

Are memes the quantised effect that our environment (specifically social/cultural environs) has on our developement (personally and as a species) or is there something more to it than that?

I know that our environment plays as much of a role in our development as our genetics (for example look at the cat they cloned) and I've even heard of the word meme I just didn't realise the two might be related. Then again I know very little about life sciences so I could be way off.

Proofing this comment, I realised I used many big words, I hope I'm not being circumlocutory. I eschew obfuscation in all it's diverse manifestations :)

[ant8472.livejournal.com]

As a reference point to my interest in your entry, I've always been fascinated with the evolution of life and have always sought to integrate or reconcile my other great fascination - our inherent origins, the existence of sentient life forms different from ours and the possibility of extra-terrestrial existence and intervention into our evolution/origin.

I've always wondered about consciousness. As much as the physical form can fit a conventional explanation for our existence our consciousness has always remained a great source of mystery and seems to exist on a plateau above our range of perception. We can't measure and see consciousness. All we can attest to is the chemical reactions in the brain and the synaptic responses but we can't put a particle explanation on actual consciousness.

Now you mention this concept of 'memes' which I've never heard of (career and other demands have distracted and thwarted me from reading anything on evolution in 10 years).


In which case, maybe there truly ARE gods that are not just our creation. No, that doesn't make sense. We created it in the first place, but now it DOES control us, and our evolution.

Why doesn't it make sense? What did we create in the first place? Meme's or the notion of a god? Why isn't it possible for these meme's to have always been a part of our psychobiological selves? Why can't they exist in animals? Maybe they explain why many animals have inbuilt subroutines that aren't explained by genetics? For example, how birds know from birth to migrate over many continents, or how all animals follow routines in mating and birth and a myriad of other patterns? How does a cat know to lick off the placenta off it's just born offpsring? Couldn't this be explained by this meme phenomena? Collective consciousness, pack mentalities of animals and humans, emotional associative imprints, native fears that don't come from experience but are encoded, etc etc etc?

Admittedly, I've read nothing on meme's so I just don't know. I also am not fully versed in all the dynamics and complexities of genetic coding.